They would have killed my baby.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The other members of the group’
‘The Coven?’
Shanine nodded.
‘How did you get involved with them in the first place?’ Cath asked.
‘My boyfriend’ the younger woman said, wearily. ‘He was in the Navy when I met him. He was twenty-two, I was seventeen. He was gorgeous.’ A slight smile flickered on her lips. ‘About six foot, blond and muscly. Really fit. We spent nearly all our time in bed.’ The smile faded slowly. 1 told him about my family. I was brought up Catholic but I got fed up with it. He said to me that I should come to a meeting with him, a meeting of his own church. I said yes.
And it was fine. There were about fifteen other people there, about five or six of Stuart’s friends from the Navy and some others’
‘Men and women?’
‘Yes. They just sat around and discussed their religion, saying how happy they were and how much they got from their faith. I just assumed they were talking about Christianity and I enjoyed it. It was really relaxed, you know, a happy atmosphere. The only strange thing was I never saw a Bible, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.’
‘Where did these meetings take place?’
‘In Manchester. The room was like an office but with no furniture, nothing on the walls either. It didn’t seem weird though. They had meetings every week and Stuart just said that as I’d enjoyed myself so much I should keep going.’
She lowered her eyes momentarily. ‘We were still sleeping together and I think I was in love with him by then. I just wanted to be with him.’
‘What about your family? Did you tell them?’
‘My mum left home when I was six, my dad was always out on the piss. I went to live with my gran when I was eight. I didn’t see my parents again after that.
My gran was good to me but it’s not like having your mum and dad there, is it?’
Cath saw the despair in the younger woman’s eyes and shook her head gently.
‘What happened with the group?’ she asked finally.
‘Well, the next week another person, a man, joined. He’d been invited by one of Stuart’s friends. All contacts were made face to face. I found out that the group was called The Open Church.’ She began picking at the skin at the side of one nail. ‘The meetings went on for about six weeks, then they started talking about weird things -the cult, ceremonies. They gave me books and pamphlets on it to read. I thought they were trying to show me the dangers of it.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘If only I’d known.’
Cath kept her gaze fixed on Shanine.
‘They asked me and this bloke if we wanted to find out more - they called it “going deeper”. They asked us if we wanted to stay. I said yes, but it was mainly so I could be close to Stuart. The only way I could keep his attention was to go further.’
‘What about the man who joined?’
‘He left,’ Shanine told her. ‘And, as soon as he did, they changed the meeting place. If anyone left, they always changed the meeting place. We must have moved six or seven times in the first ten weeks. Then they asked me if I wanted to come to a different kind of meeting. Stuart said it would be all right and I trusted him so I went. It was in a big place, a big building.’
‘What kind of building?’
‘Like one of those MFI places but it was empty.’
‘A warehouse?’
Shanine nodded.
Warehouse.
Cath sucked in a deep breath. She reached for her cigarettes and lit one.
‘Can I have one of those?’ Shanine asked.
Cath lit a cigarette for the younger woman; she noticed that her fingers were trembling.
‘What happened in the warehouse?’ Cath asked.
‘We all had a drink - just wine, but I think mine must have been drugged. They started praying and I just seemed to fall asleep, but my eyes were open. I was out of it for about the first half-hour. I mean, I’ve done drugs before but this was something else. I was smashed. Then, when I came round they were all sitting in a circle around me. There was just one candle lit and they were all praying in some language I couldn’t understand. It sounded like Arabic or something. I felt calm though -1 think that must have been the drugs - but the rest of them were going ape. They started off excited but then they got really aggressive, shouting. And there was always one man who led them, every time.’
‘The same man?’
Shanine nodded, took a drag on the cigarette.
‘It was always the same man and he never took his eyes off me the whole time they were praying. Stuart told me they were praying I was the right person for the group because they wanted me in their church. They wanted me.’
A solitary tear trickled down her cheek.
‘That was the first time anyone had wanted me’ she said, softly. ‘I was flattered. I wanted to be there because they wanted me.’
She took a long drag, blowing the smoke out in a bluish-grey stream.
‘At the next meeting, they told me the truth,’ she said, flatly.
Cath sat forward in her seat, watching as Shanine wiped the now freely flowing tears away with one grubby hand. ‘The truth about what?’ she asked.
‘About the church, about who they were worshipping, who they expected me to serve.’ Cath looked on in fascination.
‘That was the thing, when they prayed, it was never to God, it was always to someone they called the Protector,’ Shanine continued. ‘They said I was to help them serve the Protector. I knew I’d gone too far then, that there was something wrong, but it was too late.’
‘What did they call themselves, Shanine?’
‘The Satanic Church, but they told me never to say that in front of others.’
She ground out the cigarette in a nearby ashtray. ‘After that they said I was ready.’
‘For what?’
‘Initiation.’
Eighty-two
Cath watched as the younger woman pulled another cigarette from the packet and pushed it between her thin lips.
The journalist again obliged with a light.
She watched intently as Shanine drew on the cigarette, brushing her hair from her eyes, shifting in her seat to try and ease the weight in her belly.
‘Who decided to initiate you,’ Cath continued.
‘The other members of the group,’ said Shanine, watching as Cath fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a microcassette recorder, which she set down close to the younger woman.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Cath asked, pressing the Record switch.
Shanine looked at the machine, its twin spools turning silently.
‘How many of the other members did you know by name?’ the journalist asked.
‘Apart from Stuart, none of them, but he told me that they were important people. He reckoned a couple of them were social workers. One was a businessman. There was a doctor, too. If any of the group were sick, they had to see him. We weren’t allowed to see outsiders.’ Shanine gave a hollow laugh.
